The "aureole of unpopularity" which encircled Bismarck's brow during four short years of inaugural premiership has, to all appearance, vanished under the influence of unbroken success, making room throughout the world for a confiding deference to his capacity and forethought, that every year seems to intensify. It is he, in the belief of most governments, who has preserved to them what never was more indispensable for their very existence—peace in Europe. With supreme adroitness, he avoids entanglements for himself and his country, bears many an affront patiently before retorting, keeps up the appearance of a good understanding after its substance has long passed away, but, when fairly engaged in diplomatic contention, lays out his field in a manner that insures success. People agree, therefore, that it is best to take him as he is. And it is in the nature of man when he has once accorded that favor to a fellow-creature, to "take him as he is," that he ends by liking him. Thus Bismarck, of all living men the most unlikely to succeed in the race after a world-wide popularity, is probably at this moment the best-liked man in either hemisphere.
His own countrymen have shown a decided indisposition to admit him among their household gods. To them he was, from the commencement of his political career, the very embodiment of what had gradually become the most objectionable type of Teuton existence—the unmitigated squireen or Junker, with his poverty and arrogance, with his hunger and thirst after position and good living, with his hatred for the upstart liberal burgher class. "Away with the cities! I hope I may yet live to see them levelled to the ground." Is there not a ring of many centuries of social strife, so laboriously kept down by the reigning dynasty, in these stupendous words, which were pronounced by Bismarck in 1847, when among the leaders of the conservatives in the first embryo parliament of the Prussian monarchy? And if uncongenial to the generation of Prussians among whom he had grown up, how infinitely greater was the dislike against him of South Germans, more gifted, as a rule, by nature, to whom the name of Prussian is synonymous of all that is strait-laced and overweening and unnatural and—generally inconvenient.
Little of that sentiment remains among the Germans of the present day. Such strangers as have had the opportunity of observing the attitude of the nation during the late celebration of his seventieth birthday, agree in declaring them to have been spontaneous, enthusiastic, and at times almost aggressive. Some tell us, to be sure, that the farther from Berlin the more gushing has been the ecstasy. The electors of Professor Virchow and of Herr Löwe, in whose electoral districts a torchlight procession on the eve of Bismarck's birthday had to elbow its way through immense crowds, must have kept at home. The municipality of Berlin, a model body of civic administrators, sent a birthday letter to their "honorary citizen," but abstained, with proper self-respect, from tendering their congratulations through a deputation. No Berlin citizen of any importance had a hand in the management of the procession. Yet, if thousands kept aloof, tens of thousands shared the national enthusiasm—students of universities chiefly, but older men too, even in distrustful, radical Berlin. And as for South Germany, where the gospel of protection seems, perhaps, to be more firmly believed in than any other, we read of trains to Berlin taken by storm, banquets, processions, chorus-singing—of real, heartfelt, rapturous effervescence.
There cannot be a shadow of doubt that, to numberless non-Prussians at any rate, the new era of German unity has brought a symbol of greatness not before known, and that they worship in Bismarck the hero who has given them a country to love, who has delivered them from the pettiness and self-satisfaction of Philistinism.
Now, if this be so—if, indeed, the countries of the world at large, and Germany in particular, acknowledge him almost affectionately as the leading statesman of the day, would it not be an interesting study to examine the degree of merit due to him personally, the character of the present administration, and what lasting good or lasting evil may be expected from this new phase of European politics? The subject, through its weight and its bulk alike, excludes full treatment within the limits of an essay. Nevertheless, since it intertwines itself with nearly every other question of moment, a few remarks by an outsider may be acceptable.
Proclamation of the German Empire at Versailles.